Designing the Tangible Interface
Prototyping User Experiences for Smart Objects beyond the touch screen
Digital experiences have taken over much of design, but people still live in the real world. Tangible interfaces shape how billions of people experience the world — whether a driver can change the radio without leaving a lane, whether a patient can operate their own insulin pump, whether a child’s toy sparks wonder or frustration.
Every well-designed smart device needs a designer who understands both the screen and the object we hold in our hands — this book is how you can become that designer.
As physical tools are extensions of the body, this book is organized around the human senses you know — and a few surprising new ones.
This book discusses high level strategies for designing interactive objects and how they differ from digital interfaces. We will explore case studies of tangible interfaces, from car dashboards to home electronics, and the challenges and trade offs that cause many products to fail.
We will also explore practical hands-on demonstrations of the sensors and code behind smart device technology. This is a “learn by doing” book – more fun if you build along. This material has been written with the help of semesters of design students who were exploring electronics and coding for the first time. No technical experience is necessary, just curiosity and a sense of play.
Digital experiences have taken over much of design, but people still live in the real world. Tangible interfaces shape how billions of people experience the world — whether a driver can change the radio without leaving a lane, whether a patient can operate their own insulin pump, whether a child’s toy sparks wonder or frustration.
Every well-designed smart device needs a designer who understands both the screen and the object we hold in our hands — this book is how you can become that designer.
As physical tools are extensions of the body, this book is organized around the human senses you know — and a few surprising new ones.
This book discusses high level strategies for designing interactive objects and how they differ from digital interfaces. We will explore case studies of tangible interfaces, from car dashboards to home electronics, and the challenges and trade offs that cause many products to fail.
We will also explore practical hands-on demonstrations of the sensors and code behind smart device technology. This is a “learn by doing” book – more fun if you build along. This material has been written with the help of semesters of design students who were exploring electronics and coding for the first time. No technical experience is necessary, just curiosity and a sense of play.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: What is Tangible Design?
Chapter 2: Prototyping as a Design Philosophy
Chapter 3: Congratulations! Your baby is a… robot?
Chapter 4: Do computers think? And how?
Chapter 5: Our computer ‘brain’: BBC Microbit
Chapter 6: Input
Chapter 7: Communication
Chapter 8: Motion
Chapter 9: How do our devices perceive the world? How do we?
Chapter 10: Sight
Chapter 11: Touch
Chapter 12: Sound
Chapter 13: Taste
Chapter 14: Smell
Chapter 15: Position and Orientation
Chapter 16: Extra Sensory Perception
Chapter 17: Advanced Evolutions
Chapter 18: Hybrid Devices: Physical controls and On-Screen UX
Chapter 19: Taking your design from prototype to production
Chapter 20: Designing Physical Objects
Chapter 21: Beyond the Microbit: Other microcontroller hardware
Chapter 22: Graduation: Make something delightful!
